A Lonely Place
by mya
Summary: Another slightly strange short story - not a lot of action, but try it out and tell me what you think!


  
  
  
A LONELY PLACE  
  
By Mya Thevendra  
  
  
Wallace didn't know what to make of it. The hundreds of dead soldiers were one thing; he'd seen enough corpses that he didn't even notice the blood and the blank, staring eyes anymore. The fields of slaughtered alien insects, he could have done without - seeing them was still turning his stomach, although in the past few weeks, he'd been getting used to the sight of them; carcasses perforated and steaming, riddled with spike holes, or blown apart, or burnt to crisp, stinking husks. There was a war on, after all.   
  
But this, this was something of a first for Wallace.  
  
He'd seen strange things before, out here on the front line, light years from any place he might want to call home. Once he'd seen something called a cuwetil, a spindly amphibious creature about the size of a small child. Standing there in the gore sopped mud, and with rain beating down around him, Wallace stared at this, the strangest creature he had ever laid his miserable eyes on, and was reminded of a cuwetil; except for the fact that this thing had scales, and was a good deal larger. And it was wearing armour.  
  
He dropped his bag to the ground, the assorted salvage and bits of junk within it clanking together, and stepped closer. The thing was stretched across the top of a low boulder, perfectly still, and it was bleeding. A gash wide enough for Wallace to have fitted his hand through had cleaved armour and flesh, running from its throat down to its hips, and blood was seeping from it; but not the red blood of a Terran, or a murdering alien 'Zerg', but a deep, cerulean blue, which seemed itself to throb and shimmer. He had never seen a colour like it. Rain chipped and snapped upon the thing's mud-spattered body, washing the trickling blue streams down the sides of the rock. Wallace stooped, picking a piece of metal from the sludge at his feet, and hurled it at the creature. Nothing happened. It must be dead, he thought, and took another step closer. As he did, the thing's head came slowly into view; the arrangement of crests and ridges, and hard, glistening flesh was almost hypnotic. Its eyes were set deep into its skull, black, and glossy, and thoroughly lifeless.   
  
Wallace shook his head, and questioned what his own eyes were showing him; his heart was racing, and his mind turned at last back to his trade. Whatever this thing was, it was going to make him a fortune. He clambered up onto the boulder, and sharply prodded the creature with his finger. Still nothing. Licking his lips, Wallace drew his eyes over it; its protective armour was all golden curves and looping bands, but its construction was such that he could see no way of removing any part of it. He dragged his fingers across the armour's surface; it was smooth, even through the mud and scorch marks, and in a way that almost felt as though he was touching water, and not hard metal. Strange symbols were embossed into it, in loose, swirling patterns. Wallace shuffled along on his knees, and then saw something that made him suddenly forget the eight years of dreary squalor that he had spent scavenging out in the middle of nowhere. It was held between the ends of three slender, but rigid strands of metal, which looped around the creature's throat like a necklace; a crystal, about as long as Wallace's hand, and about half the width; he looked closer, and could have sworn that he saw colours moving within it, even shapes. Water fled from its surface, and it looked immaculate against its mutilated bearer, colourless and colourful at once, and shining with some distant, faded aura, that vanished if Wallace looked directly at it. For just a moment, he knelt, and stared. The trek back to the frontier lands would take him four days; after that, he could cash his savings in, and find a ship to take him to the heart of Confederate space. To take him home. There was no question in his mind that he was looking at something more valuable than anything he could think of; he would never have to worry about money again. Eight years he'd spent on the front line, trailing the army's movements in the search for scrap, and living no better than an animal; he had no friends, and there had been some days when he'd almost swallowed a bullet, rather than spend another day slogging through the filth. But it was over; he'd finally made it.   
  
With trembling hands, Wallace reached forward, and grasped the crystal.  
  
"Don't you touch that, Wally!"  
  
Wallace scooted backwards, almost slipping down onto the ground, and looked up. Stood with hands on hips, and the bodies of aliens and dead men strewn at her feet, was Wallace's mother; the mother who he had left behind on a planet he couldn't even remember the name of.  
  
The mother who had died when he was nineteen.  
  
"I'm telling you now, Wally, you'd better take your paw off that, or I'm gonna tan your ass bright red, d'you hear me?"  
  
Wallace looked, and tried desperately to understand, but could not. He simply squinted down at her through the drizzle, his jaw open. She looked exactly as he remembered her.  
  
"That's not yours! Now you let go of it, and get outta here."  
  
Wallace was more or less frozen in place, overcome with fright, his hand still wrapped around the pulsing crystal.  
  
"Wallace," said Wallace's mother with a grave shake of her head, "What did I tell you. You never steal. Never! All people have in this life is what they work for with their own hands; you take that away from them, then you may as well just go on an' kill 'em. Isn't that what I said?"  
  
Wallace blinked his eyes over and over, but she didn't disappear.  
  
"Isn't it?" she yelled.  
  
"He's…already dead."   
  
Wallace wondered at the sound of his own voice, surprised to find himself talking to someone who had died more than twenty years before. The word 'insane' came quickly to his thoughts.  
  
"He's not dead, you idiot." Said Wallace's mother, "He's dyin'."   
  
She spoke with suddenly solemn tone, one that Wallace remembered. Her eyes pierced him, and he whimpered quietly as his confusion and fear welled.  
  
"But he isn't dead yet. So you show him some respect. How would you like it if you were on your deathbed, and some good-for-nothing came an' started friskin' you to see what he could steal? You wouldn't like it, I can tell you. So stop it. Stop it, and go."  
  
Wallace grimaced, and shook his head.  
  
"Nuh-no. It, it's…"  
  
"Wally," sighed Wallace's mother, and moved towards the boulder, "I don't think you understand what it is that you've got your hand on, so I'm going to explain it to you, and I want you to listen to me, carefully. All right?"  
  
Wallace wiped the rainwater from his eyes with his free hand, and stared back.  
  
"This fella worked hard to get that. Damn hard. He worked so hard, and so long, that it makes what you've been doing with yourself for the last eight years look like a holiday at the beach. But he never stopped, even when the effort nearly killed him, he kept on at it, and eventually, when he'd proven himself worthy…" Wallace's mother pointed up towards the crystal, "He was given that. They don't give those things out to just anybody. But the ones who do get 'em, well, they're changed forever. It becomes a part of 'em. It's not just a pretty lookin' bit o' glass that you're tryin' to swipe, it's that fella's heart and soul."  
  
Wallace was being worn down. He saw his mother with his own eyes, and heard her voice, but was suddenly aware that she was asking him to return to his life in hell. Eight years was enough, and nobody, least of all his witch of a mother, was going to keep him in the dirt when he'd found a way out.  
  
"Bullshit! If I take it now, if I take it once he's croaked, what difference does it make? It's his own damn fault for coming here!" he cried.  
  
"He had to come. He didn't want to, but he was obliged. Lord knows I don't like it here, but that's just the way it is."  
  
Just then, it seemed to Wallace that his mother began to look different. Not obviously so, and not in mere appearance, but in the way that he saw her. He noticed for the first time that although she was standing in the rain, she was completely dry. And she was young, the age she would have been when he was a young boy.  
  
"It was my mistake." She said, "I meant to watch, an' only watch. But I guess I got careless. And now they've killed me."  
  
Fear swelled once more, and Wallace looked down at his mother, whose face had suddenly and chillingly begun to bleed and wither.   
  
"My time's running out, son. I'll die soon. If I leave without my heart, then…I will suffer."  
  
The apparition dissolved in the falling rain, and Wallace spun to face the creature. It's eyes were glowing a dull amber, the last, flickering embers of a life which had begun centuries before. Their gazes locked, and Wallace understood at last. The creature had lacked the strength to communicate directly, but held just barely to revive a memory, and alter it. Wallace was transfixed by its eyes; there was emotion there, but of a kind that no Terran could feel. He wondered if it believed in right or wrong, if it could feel hatred, or forgiveness. Eight years spent alone had given him little cause to feel anything, but he knew that this creature was in pain, and that he himself had the power to amplify it, or else to relieve it. A gnawing thought in the recesses of his mind told him what was right, what was humane. In the next moment, Wallace had made his choice.   
  
  
  
  
The creature lay unmoving, while Wallace stood with his hands in his pockets and watched. He didn't know how, but he knew to expect something out of the ordinary. Sure enough, the creature's body began to tremble, the blood around its wound fizzing and spitting. An eruption of light consumed it, and Wallace staggered backwards, shielding his eyes, as wreaths of pure blue fire coursed across it's skin. The flames leapt up into the air, and with the mighty sound of rushing water, they flared brightly and then disappeared. The creature was gone.  
  
He could barely believe what he had just seen, and wasn't entirely convinced at first that he hadn't just imagined the whole affair. The perfectly formed crystal in his hands did a fine job of reassuring him. It seemed a little duller than before, but in all likelihood, it was still going to fetch a big enough price to put an end to his days of drudgery, as well as erase any nagging feelings of guilt.  
  
Wallace tucked the crystal into his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and smiling for the first time in years, he disappeared into the rains.  



End file.
